


Fastest Girl In Town

by twistedingenue



Series: Basic Bitches [4]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M, Family Reunion, Fast Cars, right in the childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You just don't get out of family reunions. You get out of them what you put in. And maybe steal a car while you are there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fastest Girl In Town

 

“Yes mom, I’m gonna be there. I’ve already cleared the weekend off with the director. No distractions, and I’ve got myself covered if anything goes….yes mom, Clint’s able to make it. Well, since I know the person that schedules his missions, I was….I know you saw me on TV momma; I’m on TV like, at least once a week. Because the Avengers…yes I’m bringing plenty of autographs of Captain America for the kids….no, Hulk couldn’t keep the pen in his hand to get one for Uncle Mark. Yes, yes mom, I will. No, I promise, I’ll be there the whole weekend. Mom! Mom, I’m sorry, I have to go. Got to get ahead on my work before I can leave tomorrow…”Darcy sighs, “No, we’re flying into a normal airport mom, no helicopters. Renting a car. I know Cammie could pick us up from the airport, but we need to be able to leave if….no really, I gotta go. Loveya, bye.” Darcy hits the end call button when she sees Tony just staring at her.

“They don’t want my autograph? I’m offended by your family.” He says with mock outrage. Rule number thirty-five of living with Avengers: Someone always observes Darcy’s phone conversations with her mother. At this point, she’s starting to wonder if no one listened to them, did they actually happen?

“Why would anyone want your autograph Tony? Are you important or something?” Darcy says back lightly, “I think we keep you around for some reason, but I just can’t think of what that is.” She taps her finger on her chin.

“I could so evict you.”

“Ahh, that’s the reason I’m nice to you. I’ll take some autographs, but the kids are really more into Cap than anyone else. Clint feels put out too and he’s not even on our public faces group.”

“I do not feel put out, sweetheart. I feel…” Clint struggles for a good word. He’s sitting on the couch, scrolling through some documents on his tablet, “cheated. Because now I have to work for your family to like me.”

“They are going to love you, cowboy. You’ll still be a yank, but at least your cornfed and sorta military. That’ll help a lot.” She walks over to kiss the top of his head, and while Tony makes a face she ends up peering at what Clint is reading, “Are you…did you make dossiers on my family members?”

“You have fifteen cousins, Darce. And some of them have kids and some are married, and some have kids. You can’t name all of them by sight, someone has to go in prepared.”

Darcy is unamused, “My family is not a mission, Clint.”

“Did you just drawl?” Tony says.

“No, I did not!”

“There she goes again. Darcy, do you get a southern accent when talking about your family?”

Darcy sits down next to Clint, hiding her face in his shoulder, “Maybe? Yes…I do. It’s a defense mechanism, I swear.” Clint shifts so he’s got an arm around her, tells her its adorable, “Yeah well just wait until this weekend, because it’s not going to stop. I only get worse.”

“How can it possibly get worse? You spontaneously gain an accent.” Clint is stifling a laugh with a big grin.

Darcy doesn’t dignify that with a response, because really, she’s not about to go into a detailed discussion over why, once they land in Birmingham, she’s probably going to at least hum the Alabama fight song, even though she doesn’t really like football. It’s just what the family does, and it can’t be helped. God forbid, if any of the family were there, she’d probably end up with half the airport singing along with, and the other half must be Auburn fans.

Tony peers over their shoulders, “What sort of name is Pinkerton?”

Darcy decides not to go over the intricacies of naming for inheritance reasons when your cousin Meredith Lee marries into the local politician family. It’s just easier that way. Tony’s a coastal sort of person, and not at all about the southern third coast.

                                                        *

She does refrain from singing the Alabama fight song, but only just, but mostly because Clint asks, “How’d your mom end up in Virginia if your family mostly lives in Alabama and Tennessee?” and it’s really an easy answer. Mom tried to go to school out of state, went to Virginia Tech before meeting some guy that convinced her to drop out and support him instead and she never made it back home after that, because then she met dad.

Life story of thousands of women, and her mother is one of them. She’s not even the only one in the family that the world worked out like this. There are Montgomery women coast to coast who followed a man to have him leave her, but it works out.

Darcy’s pretty sure that you couldn’t say either she or Clint leads or follows for more than like, a few minutes at a time, or if they are working.

Government ID’s have their perks, one of which is first class and not having to check their bags, so they almost miss the petite brunette at the baggage claim, holding up a sign that says “LEWIS”

“DARCY” she yells out, and Darcy winces and holds her ground because she knows what happens next. A great ball of energy jumps onto her back and it takes all of her training to actually stop her training and not throw her cousin to the ground.

“Camilla Mae Montgomery, you really cannot do that to me anymore!” Darcy chides, noticing the ready stance that Clint’s taken, gives a little hand wave to get him to stand down.  She watches him when he looks Cammie over, because Cammie is just a scaled down version of Darcy with brown eyes instead of blue. It’s probably for the best that they have never lived near each other as adults, because there would be so much trouble, “Did your mother or mine arrange for you to pick me up? Because we’ve got a rental, sort of.”

“Nah, I actually only got in about a half hour ago from school, wasn’t sure if I’d be able to rearrange classes to get in.” She smiles brightly, “This the boy?”

“I’m sure you are the first of many to ask that this weekend, yeah, Clint, meet my irresponsible cousin Camilla Mae. Cammie, meet my irresponsible boyfriend Clint Barton.” They share looks of exasperation, “hey, why don’t we get the car?”

The car is one of SHIELD’s, all high tech disguised as a well-used black sedan, and it only looks utterly boring. Darcy knows that it’s got a great engine, but it’s more the armor and the bulletproof glass that’s a real treat. She actually feels safe in this thing.

Not that she’s going to need it in Alabama, but these cars are all around the country for SHIELD’s use. The security is nice.

Clint offers to drive; Darcy doesn’t really like commercial air anymore after being sent around the country in a combination of Stark’s and SHIELD own personal craft, and she’s tired. Clint is used to anything, though, but Darcy refuses to let him drive saying, “Do you know where we are going?”

“There is such a thing as GPS in here Darce, it’s rather good if I remember correctly.”

“Ha, not where we need to go.” Darcy says, Cammie joining in at the end.

The drive is pretty standard for the most part, until Darcy pulls off the highway into the start of a hilly region that gets increasingly remote as they drive through. They avoid any real conversation, Cammie talking about the ag program at school and how it’s practically impossible but she’s loving it, and that hey she’s going to spare asking a million questions because Aunt Rachel has all of them. All of them.

In short, Cammie is acting twenty, Clint looks more and more worried the farther off the grid they seem to go, and Darcy is trying not to speed too much on country roads. She turns off again of the country road into gravel road through a field, which eventually turns into a campsite. There are cabins of all sorts, and it's more of a recreation park than the type of camping Clint’s probably familiar with.

“Oh god, I hope there’s one of the small rooms still open in the bunkhouse.” Darcy says when they pull through to a small parking lot, filled with cars and trucks, “I know we didn’t get one of the small cabins rented for us in time, but I really hate the bunk beds.”

“You just say that because you fell off of one when you were eleven,” Cammie points out with a smirk.

“That explains an awful lot.” Clint teases when he gets out of the car and grabs their bags. He’s got hers as well, because the moment she steps out of the car, there’s at least two kids running up and begging for her attention. She’s been missing from the reunion for the past few years and she has no idea whose they are at this point, or who they are. Kids grow so much in short years.

Cammie yells to them, “Peter, Ray! You go run and tell Aunt Mary that Darcy’s here, Lizzie, is anyone camped out in the four bed in the bunkhouse?” The little girl among the boys, nods yes, “Can you relocate them?” and Lizzie just beams and kicks up dust when the three of them run back to the biggest cabin.

                                                                 *         

Clint can’t help laughing at the antics. Cammie’s a smaller version of Darcy, which is instantly endearing and creepy, and that little girl may well follow right into their footsteps.

“So where are we?” He asks, because he’s got to report his position and do some arranging of his own.

“Kerriack Park. We rent it out every year, people pay back Uncle moneybags whatever they can afford. It’s more important that we get here.” He watches her take a deep breath before they enter through the main doors,

“I’m sorry we haven’t gotten here sooner,” Clint says, honestly. It’s not his idea of fun by any means, but Darcy has such a fond and amused look that he wishes were there all the time.

“Things got in the way. Jobs. Work, work work.” She takes his hand, “You ready for the show, cowboy? This ain’t no society party.” Her accent keeps slipping in an out, like it can’t decide if she’s really here, “But if we’ve got time tonight, I’ll show you all the secret passages, and we can play horseshoes at midnight.”

One of the little brats comes back out and offers to take up their bags, but both Clint and Darcy have things that shouldn’t be messed with (her tablet, his compact bow and quiver. They tried to keep the classified to a minimum, but some things can’t be helped) and he thanks the kid, who runs off pretty quickly.

They manage to slip in quietly, drop their bags to the side of the door and there’s a couple of other bags there too, so they aren’t the first recent arrivals. He can’t really help that he scans the room, there’s a great room where some very elderly folks are sitting and napping, a ping-pong table set up in an adjoining room that no one is playing because it is overloaded with food. There’s a large group of women, and kids in the kitchen next door.

Darcy has caught their eyes and pulls Clint towards the sheer mass of women talking in the kitchen. When she turns back to him it’s with an entreating silent question. Are you ready?                                                                                  *

Darcy’s mother is intimidating. He’s stared down evildoers of all stripes, both up close and through crosshairs and sights, but Mary Louise Lewis is just...intimidating. There’s so much hair. He’s heard ‘the higher the hair, the closer to God’ all his life, but he hasn’t seen it up close before. She’s bottle blonde with penciled in eyebrows and the same blue, beautiful blue eyes he sees in Darcy, and she’s downright assessing him.

He’s seen Natasha give the same look before she’s about to pull out a garrote, so he knows this feeling. It’s called terror.

“This is that Clint Barton of yours?” She asks Darcy while still looking at him. Her voice is pitched a little higher than he expected and he wonders how much of that is an act.

“Yes mom, Agent,” she stresses that title, “Clint Barton. From SHIELD.” Darcy is making rounds around the kitchen, hugging and kissing cheeks of what he counts to be half the adult female population in the Montgomery clan.

“He’s a little old, don’t you think?”

“Nope, I don’t think that at all.” Mary is still looking him over, and hey, he’s not old at all, “He’s got roughly a ten year old mentally, so it really evens out.” And hey, he can choose not to rise to the bait. But then he thinks back to what Darcy said happened to her mother as a young woman. Older man taking advantage of her, and what must be going through her head as she sees the effects of being closer to forty than he’d like, the stray grey hair and wrinkle here and there.

“He makes you happy?” she asks, pursing and eating her lips as Darcy hugs her cousin Lydia Grace and then makes her way back to Clint, kissing his cheek and taking his hand again.

“Very much so, mom. He’s one of the good ones out there.”

And then it’s a sea change in the room, everyone talking at once and Mary is hugging both him and Darcy at the same time, “Well then, he’s welcome here.”

                                                        *

Now that Clint’s presence is allowed and acknowledged, Aunt Sarah starts the questioning from the sink where she’s washing dishes and handing them to a younger kid to dry. “Where did you meet?”

Darcy answers, “New York.”

Clint says, “New Mexico.”

Darcy’s mom says, “Those are a little ways apart there. Do you want to get your stories straight, or do you need some time to make them up?”

“I met Clint when I first moved to New York to work with Dr Foster after graduation, he stole my cookies after dropping out of the ceiling.” Darcy crosses her arms with a tilt of her head, challenging him to beat her story.

“She stole my car when I was on assignment in New Mexico.”

“That was your car?” Darcy asks, surprise in her voice, “Do you still have it? That was a sweet ride.”

Mary starts scolding Darcy, “I thought you were over that phase of your life. Didn’t we scare that out of you after you stole Pastor Scott’s Camero when you were seventeen and the brakes went out and it crashed into the creek?”

Darcy ignores Clint’s slow blink, “I really needed to get to Walmart. Jane was insufferable and needed Red Bull. That was your car?”

“It was really attractive to watch you hotwiring. Coulson was furious when I came back with stripped wires, but when I explained that it was you that did it, he started working on the hiring paperwork, just in case.”

                                                        *

Her father is named Parker. Parker Lewis. It takes every single micron of his being to not make horrible jokes that really show his age. Darcy makes them for him, and it’s a relief.

He’s pretty sure he can’t lose with Darcy Lewis.

Things aren’t perfect of course at the reunion. He sees where Darcy gets her strong opinions, her forceful personality, and her ability to manage the lives of superheroes. Most of the family is that sort of strong willed loudness that will ride roughshod over everyone if not managed and Darcy is right in the thick of it.

But some aren’t.

Darcy’s conscripted into the kitchen army, and Clint finds a quiet corner and plays chess with a cousin just a little younger than Darce, Jack, on leave from Afghanistan, dressed in jeans and an ARMY shirt. His hair has that fuck you I’m on leave floppiness, and he’s rocking the stubble. He’s freaked out by all the noise and all the movement, and seems grateful for just a little respite from all the flag-waving of his relatives.

“It’s just, every time I try to actually talk to someone about the shit I’m doing, it’s like they shut down the part of their brain that can actively listen.” Jack says, half an hour into a nearly wordless game, “But then they tell me how proud they are about me serving my country, and I just want say I helped protect a school for three weeks, and when we rotated out of the village, it was burned down.”

Clint makes a move, “Everyone’s willing to watch a war movie and see the triumphs, but not the failures and the pointlessness, unless they can see a narrative behind it. Serve your country is what they fall back on when they can’t understand.”

“How long does it take for it all to stop feeling like crap in hindsight?” Jack is young and not stupid, not by a long shot if he’s going to ask this question now of someone practically a stranger. If you can open up to a willing stranger, you take it, you never know when that’s going to happen again. Clint’s been lucky to have Natasha in the past and now Darcy, where they can mutually attempt to understand the shit that happens. That a successful operation isn’t always a clean one, and they are the ones that can fester the most.

“Hasn’t yet.” He says simply, “You just get better at preventing the crap.”

“Is that what working for SHIELD is like?” Jack asks, picking up a pawn and rubbing it before setting it down again.

“No, working for SHIELD is actively seeking out the crap and taking a piss in it.” He rubs his hands over his face, “Look Jack, forget above serving your country. Forget the patriotic bullshit people will serve up when are home, I leave that for Captain America and so can you. Do the work you know is right. Take the time to develop whatever ethical codes let you sleep at night. Live by those, even when it gets you in trouble.”

“And when I get into trouble?” Jack moves himself into a very familiar position that Darcy takes whenever she’s got him trapped in his words.

“Trouble can take you pretty far.”

                                               *

  “You were serious about the horseshoes at midnight, weren’t you?” Clint asks as Darcy’s pulling a cardigan out of her bag.

“Yep!” she laughs, “My little cohort of cousins always used to sneak out of wherever we were hunkering down for the night, because who wants to stay with parents. They kept trying in enforce a curfew on us, locked our doors and finally gave up. The worst thing we did was come out to play horseshoes in the dark. We’re out in the middle of nowhere Alabama and they think someone is going to come and steal us away.”

“I’m starting to think that they just wouldn’t notice. All those cousins.”

“Shut up old man, or I’ll make you throw the match. Lose to whoever comes out.” She teases, her fingers dancing up his chest and hitting his nose. He holds her by the waist, and she mocks him by getting on her tiptoes to kiss his forehead, his cheeks, and his mouth and lingers there.

“You aren’t getting out of it. No matter how much you want to sleep, Captain Naptime, this is a tradition.” And it’s her favorite tradition, because she can’t keep her aunts and uncles and all the twice removed or the greats straight, because the reunion was the only time she saw them. Her family always gave what they could to rent out the place, but the trip cost so much that they didn’t have much left to reimburse. Darcy always felt more sorry for her mother than anyone else, because she didn’t have her own family close enough to visit and her in-laws didn’t care for her. But her cousins, her cousins were always a treat to be able to see.

At home, she was a little to wild for the girls to really befriend, so it was always guys as friends until the magic of puberty and suddenly she didn’t exist as a whole person for like three years. It was hard to rebuild friendships after years of feeling like that only part of her acknowledged was her chest.

But her cousins were her family, each having at least some of the same patterns and vices, and they could at least relate to each other for a weekend every summer.

Darcy opens the window of the room and climbs through it, stepping out to the awning, “You coming?”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had to sneak out of a bedroom, sweetheart.” Clint says, amused but he follows her anyways. There’s a drainpipe that Darcy scrambles down, which he follows.

“Alright, I’m gonna have to thank Hill for making me do some physical training because that was a lot easier than it was when I was here last, holy crap,” Darcy watches Clint just look at the height and jump down with a little flip, “show off.”

“You love it.”

Only a few of her “cohort” made it to the reunion this year, and only the ones without kids made it to horseshoes. So there’s Cammie, who was just a bit young to be part of their group, but she’s honorary enough, and Jack, who greets Clint with a knowing smile and a handshake and her with a bear hug, and then there’s Maggie. Maggie’s an outlier amongst the curvy women in the family, stick straight and her blond hair doesn’t come from a bottle. She has skepticism where Darcy has wit and sarcasm, and outspoken where Jack is reserved. And she looks at Clint like she needs to dismantle him.

That upsets Darcy, just a little. But it’s family, so she just goes to the equipment box and pulls out a pile of horseshoes.

“Do you play with any real rules?” Clint asks, taking one and testing the weight.

“Does this look regulation to you? It’s a single stake in a playground.” Maggie mutters, “Mostly we just try to hit the stake, and laugh when we can’t.”

“Thankfully, this is one of those things where close counts,” Jack quips.

“Like hand grenades.” Darcy asserts, “and bidding on The Price is Right.”

“As long as you don’t go over,” Maggie says, throwing her horseshoe, it flies past the stake and she scowls at it, “Too much power that time.”

Jack takes a go at it, and lands just short. Darcy hits the post, but from the outside, Cammie doesn’t even come close and eggs Clint on, “Come on muscles, lets see your aim.”

Darcy deadpans, “Oh yes Barton, let’s see your aim.”

Clint hefts the shoe one last time before hitting a very loud ringer. Darcy hands him the spare shoes and there’s three more rings in quick succession.

“So, I take it you aren’t a paper-pusher in SHIELD.” Maggie says, and she sounds oddly like Natasha right now, quick and assessing, her mind putting together pieces and Darcy can see the instant that she knows exactly who Clint is.

“I haven’t heard from you lately, Mags, what are you doing? Still school?” Maggie had been directly behind her in the girls going to college thing, and she went considerably longer than Darcy.

“I defend in a month. Decided whether or not to take this job I was offered afterwards.” Maggie says and she shifts her weight, “Y’all ever hear of Omnitech?”

Clint stiffens and Darcy freezes for just a second. Omnitech’s a pretty entrenched business but also a major front for AIM. Maggie takes their reactions in, and nods without saying anything.

“Mitchell brought the Mustang.” Jack mentions offhandedly to break the tension.

“Oh damn, did he finish restoring it?” Cammie chatters and explains to Clint that the Mustang was handed down to their older cousin Mitch.

“To full cherry red perfection. He’s never going to let any of us even in it.”

“Well, that’s bullshit,” Darcy says, “Cause I’ve been wanting to get in that baby since I stole it the last time.”

“Darcy, you are not hotwiring your cousins classic car,” Clint actually scolds, it’s so adorable that she pats his cheek.

“Of course I’m not, you are going to steal his keys.” When he balks at being the sneaky spy he actually is in real life, “Handler order. Asset must retrieve the package.”

“Is this what sex with you guys is like? Because hey, kinky.” Cammie laughs.

“Ugh, Camilla you are not supposed to know what the kinky sex is,” Maggie manages to look undignified for once, “Mitch is in cabin 3. He keeps his keys next to the door. Because he’s an idiot.”

“See Clint, really you are just providing an object lesson in security.” She channels Hill for a moment in her demeanor, before remembering that while Clint respects Maria a hell of a shitton, he’s not exactly fond of her, so she raises an eyebrow and half smiles like Natasha at her most devious.

Clint relents, because he’s not an idiot, and keys on a hook next to the door is the easiest job ever. He barely even has to open the door.

Darcy has them snatched from is hand and is opening the door to the mustang, a beautiful 67 hardtop that she last took out when she was sixteen and it was nearly the end of her driving career when she rolled it back in with her cousins inside at nine in the morning after they fell asleep in a field star searching.

The cousins cram into the back, good thing Mags has stayed skinny, because Jack has shoulders and Cammie has hips. Clint takes the passenger side with an eye roll.

She keeps the lights off and keeps the car at a crawl as they roll out of the grounds, and only picks up a little speed as they backtrack their way through the middle of nowhere.  The cousins are relaxed in the back seat.

“Is the track still around?” she asks.

“Was last year,” Cammie says, “I had a motorcycle and it was awesome.”

Darcy starts to speed and it’s not long before she pulls up alongside a disused country racetrack. The track is kept up, but nothing else about it is. The locals don’t really care much about landscaping; they want some place to drive fast.

Darcy hops out and Mags holds out a hairpin, “Is it the same lock?” Darcy asks and Maggie says that it is, “I got the combo then.”

“Townies refused to give it to me,” Jack protests.

“I’ve got better tits than you, Jack,” Darcy says as she’s working the lock on the gate, “come on, don’t be rusty already, baby,” she murmurs to the lock. It unlocks audibly, and she’s got to force it with her new muscles to actually get open, but she moves the gate open.

“Y’all ready?” she struts back to the Mustang with her hands on her hips, “I feel the need….the need for speed.”

Once she’s in the car and on the track, all bets are off.

                                               *

Darcy is beautiful when she’s all hopped up on adrenaline. Particularly when it’s from when she’s not in danger for her life, and no one is shooting at her. And she feels just as gorgeous.

She doesn’t get to drive much at all in New York. Happy loves driving Stark’s cars. Stark loves driving his own cars. She has drivers for the SHIELD cars. She never gets to drive and she really never gets to speed. She lets out a yelp as she rounds corners at over a hundred, and she’s being careful. She’s not a teenager anymore, and she doesn’t want to trash the car, which is why she came out to the track instead of the streets, and she has passengers.

“Clint, baby,” she purrs, “Is there offensive driving training at SHIELD?”

Clint is far too calm for his own good; he could practically be reading the newspaper and yawning, “We could send you to Summit Point, I suppose. I think we contract out to them. Say we’re CIA or something.”

There’s commotion from the back seat, and the cousins are fighting over whose turn is next. Darcy doesn’t bother looking back, “Raise your hand if you have significant experience at driving high speeds in classic cars without crashing them?” And of course none of them do, but Clint does, “Oh shut up. I’m the one driving.”

“You don’t even fit your own requirements.” Jack bitches like a baby.

“I have not yet crashed a classic car. And the other car was not my fault!” She pouts as she turns the car around tight and controlled, because she’s right herself. She’s not the kid she was when she could steal a car in town and joyride, return it back before anyone notices.

It’s one thing to be the fastest girl in town when you are sixteen, okay, fourteen and a tomboy and hoping the that boys who took auto shop weren’t just staring at your tits all class. Being the car girl meant she got respect, dubious as it was, and acceptance. In a small town, it was okay, because she always brought the car back by morning with a full tank (except for the Pastors) and everyone turned a blind eye. The Lewis girl is going through a stage. A horrible, illegal stage.

But hey, she wasn’t drinking or fucked up with something worse than pot, so that put her at like, the top ten percent of her classmates with self-destructive behaviors.

She comes to a stop right outside the gates, “Barton, you caught the way back?” He nods and they each step out of the car. She relocks the gate and he catches her just as they cross paths to switch seats. He waylays her at the back of the Mustang, leans her down on the trunk, kissing her hotly and soundly as the peanut gallery catcalls and hollers.

She’s found a turn on. This is her surprised face. Totally surprised by this revelation right here.

Clint drives back to the site without any troubles, the cousins asking him questions, which he either misdirects or says classified too, and Darcy’s head on his shoulder. He’s careful to park exactly right, put the keys back exactly right, and even sneak back into their room without letting her make a sound.

                                                                 *

Darcy tries really hard not to stare. Clint, for all his worry about meeting the good part of her family, has reigned in his wicked wit relatively well enough for the old folks. He still talks to her mother with the expression she’s going to photograph and call “I’m listening to every word you say because intelligence is my job, but woman, birds could nest in your hair”, but that’s okay, because his held in laugh is the best thing ever and mom’s good folks and paying more attention to family than to Clint. This time. Because she’s decided they are visiting New York for Christmas.

Clint and Jack have taken to each other like, well brothers, but when she says that Clint, there’s just a sad darkness to him, something they haven’t talked about much. He kisses her cheek, trying to cover his blatant feelings with impulse and brevity before heading out on a run with Jack.

She’s trying really hard not to stare now as he’s teaching Jack a few sparring tricks, with the younger boys watching and practicing around them. Jack ends up on his back more often than not. No one really expected Jack to follow family into the military, and it doesn’t really seem his place, but no one can doubt his grit about it.

But no one expected Maggie to get her PhD, or Darcy to graduate, or Cammie to go into Agriculture. Her cohort is doing things bigger and better than the generation before and there’s pride and fear there. The great aunts wonder if they’ll understand family and making do when all you have is the without, and how to depend on each other and defend each other.

“You’re being too pensive Darcy, you are allowed to stare at your boyfriend Darcy Anne, that’s what he’s there for. And boy, you picked a good specimen to stare at.” Darcy and her mother are the only two on the back porch right now, Darcy’s missed southern heat and Mom, well she’s mom and has to talk to someone, “Don’t give me that look, child, or I’ll say your full name in front of the lad. I’m just saying that you finally brought someone around to meet worth looking at. I don’t know what you were doing with all those skinny boys. Girl like you should get the men like that. How are you standing this heat with your shirt all the way buttoned,” Mom tries to go for the top buttons on Darcy’s shirt, like she’s nineteen again and it became acceptable for cleavage.

“Mom, stop that. I got him without showing off, and I’ll keep him that way too.” Darcy snaps, moving her mother’s hands off her chest, seriously.

“Well, bless your heart dear, you finally grow a backbone when I wasn’t looking. I knew all that backtalk was going to pay off eventually. I bet it comes in real handy when you are dealing with those heroes of yours.  I do so love that Captain America. He’s a dreamboat and he seems so polite and charming.”

“Yeah, nice and charming until you realize that for all that muscle, he has like opposite self-esteem, and that he might be taller, might be stronger, but even years later it sometimes crashes on him that this is the world he’s protecting, and not the one he grew up in.”

“I should make him some brownies, or you can always bring him by here next year, show him that what he misses is still around,” Darcy chokes on her tongue because Steve and her mother. It’s sexual harassment waiting to happen. “I wish we saw more of the others. We always see Stark running around, but we always have. Seems unfair that the team is bigger than those two, but we only ever see them.”

“I take the place of the rest of the team, mom. They’ve all got work that depends on them being somewhat unrecognizable.”

“My little girl, such a responsibility. Taking the place of all those big men…oh and of course that impossibly sneaky woman, Widow right? It’s big shoes to fill.” Her mom drops her voice at the end. Darcy knew that little baby voice was an act. “But you can handle it. The Montgomery women always have been able to handle what life throws at us, god willing. I raised you that way, always let you be yourself. Well,” she looks down Darcy’s shirt, “Almost always yourself.”

“I’m surprisingly good at it.” Darcy smiles, “Thank you, you know, for letting that happen.”

“And Mitch has no idea that you took his Mustang out last night.” Mary says, back in high-pitch land, with a knowing eye, and Darcy freezes, “I knew that had to be you. Lord, when I prayed for a daughter I should have been more specific. I got the right shape, but a hellion inside of it.”

Darcy laughs and they head back inside, where everyone is gathering for bingo night. Darcy makes sure that her contribution to the prize pool can be seen, because toy Captain America Shields signed by all the Avengers (even Hulk, which was an accomplishment. Thumbprint is totally a signature).  The boys are all called in and Darcy can really appreciate the whole worked out and sweaty Clint.

She doesn’t get much of a chance to play Bingo, only a few rounds in before both of their phones go off. She reads the text message as some aunt or another comments on how strange it is that they manage to get signal out here.

**Turn on closest TV. Chopper arrives in 15.**

It’s from Natasha’s SHIELD phone. The TV is an ancient thing, not even a flat screen but it’s a race to find the remote, and the whole room is looking. Cammie finds it first and doesn’t even need to change channels to see what is going on, because it’s on every channel.

It wasn’t even a hard fight, that’s the thing, just some robots, something Tony could have dealt with by himself, but they brought the team out, for funsies or something. But the feed is showing something amazing, something spectacular.

Something hits Hulk while he’s doing one of his leaps. A beam, Darcy thinks, from the chest of the 'bot. Hulk…transforms in midair, and a fucking news helicopter gets it from the perfect angle, settles on the easily recognizable features of Bruce, as Iron Man saves him from the fall.

On every channel is Bruce’s face, his academic record, everything that the media could dig up in the hour or so since it happened.

And then they switch, because it’s a perfect storm of photography, because some lucky journalist has film coverage of Natasha fighting and STEVE of all people breaking the communication regs of all people and in shot calling her Nat.

There’s not quite as much information available about her, but someone has already found her cover. Barton watches in horror. It’s a spy’s worst nightmare. Not only to be compromised, because that happens all the time. Covers get blown and shifted during even the best operations. But this is public, this is nasty.

This is career ending. At least of this part of her career. Darcy’s been prepared for this one. She’s dialing her phone, and Clint has scampered off into the ping-pong room and she knows he’s calling Natasha.

She really can’t get a break around family, she thinks, as she is finally connected where she needs to be, “Yeah, don’t care, not the most secure of lines. Say hello to SHIELD family!” She holds the phone out to the crowd of Montgomery’s assembled and the braver of the kids, Cammie and of course her parents yell, “Hello SHIELD!”

“No, it’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do, I’m away for what, not even two days and oh, let’s lets media get that close during a fight in the first place. No, no, I need you to go into the files…if you don’t have clearance for that one ask Hill. File folder is named Oh My God, Y’all Are Idiots. Arrange the press conference for after I get back. Make sure the uniforms are clean and no, my spare clothes aren’t going to cut this. Is Potts around?  Good, have her find something for me. And send a pickup for the car.”

Darcy paces the room, and watches as her mom perks up like a peacock, bursting in pride. Clint’s murmuring into his phone, and honestly that’s probably the best thing going on right now. They could care for each other better than anyone else.

She hangs up on the poor minion, and starts hugging family members, kind of at random saying, “I’m sorry, we gotta go. This is a thing, watch the news, it’ll be a big deal,” and when she gets to her mom, Clint’s shaking Jack’s hand before running upstairs to grab their bags, “I’m really sorry mom. I wish I could have stayed the whole weekend, but work.”

“It’s alright daughter, we will live without you.”

Darcy can hear the helicopter already and the footsteps down the stairs, so she decides to go for broke, “And just so when y’all watch the news in like two hours, this guys not just an agent. He’s Hawkeye. Love!”

She’s out the door before her mother starts yelling at her.  
  


“Sweetheart,” she says to Clint, as the chopper lands and the kids watch from the front porch, “Your cowboy days are over. We’re going public.”

**Author's Note:**

> thatwillbeallmisspotts over on tumblr asked for something based on "Fastest Girl in Town" It sort of got away from me. I'm sorry.


End file.
